Command Line Video Player

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv

by tirrex • 5 years ago

93 34 5 years ago

github.com

guessmyname• 5 years ago

IINA [1] is an open-source [2], native [3] modern video player for macOS based on MPV [4].

[1] https://iina.io

[2] https://github.com/iina/iina

[3] Written in Swift and designed with modern macOS (10.11+) in mind

[4] https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv

CyberRabbi2• 5 years ago

The modern media player for macOS.
For and only for modern macOS.
IINA is born to be a modern macOS application,

As a policy I stay away from all software whose primary marketed feature is being “modern,” which I wholly consider to be a meaningless term.

finiteseries2• 5 years ago

Meaning often comes easier when sentences are finished.

IINA is born to be a modern macOS application, from its framework to the user interface. It adopts the post-Yosemite design language of macOS and keeps up the pace of new technologies like Force Touch, Touch Bar, and Picture-in-Picture.

SllX2• 5 years ago

That’s not a bad policy but it’s solid software, basically a Cocoa wrapper around MPV which as it turns out, is a fairly solid idea.

Years ago when VLC was the rage, I could open any video or sound file I wanted in QuickTime Player with an array of plug-ins including Persian, Flip4Mac and a couple others I’ve long since forgotten. That served me well until it became impossible to install and use QuickTime 7 on a modern Macintosh.

IINA quickly filled that hole for me, and was a solid upgrade over a player I never asked much from, readily replicating all the features I cared about and throwing in a few more. If all you want is a media player that lets you double click a file and play it back, IINA is the best there is on the Macintosh today.

Ezhik• 5 years ago

For Windows users, there's mpv.net, which adds a GUI for configuration editing and a command palette. [1][2]

There is also mpc-qt, which replicates the classic MPC-HT UI, but with libmpv as the backend. [3]

Personally I found mpv's defaults sane enough to not need a GUI for it, but I did release an unofficial version to the Windows 10 Store with a wrapper that adds file association and macOS-style single instance support. [4][5]

[1] https://github.com/stax76/mpv.net

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9N64SQZTB3LM

[3] https://github.com/mpc-qt/mpc-qt

[4] https://github.com/SilverEzhik/mpv-msix

[5] https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9P3JFR0CLLL6

thrdbndndn3• 5 years ago

I use SMPlayer. Despite somewhat "ugly" UI, it's a very capable MPV skin.

[1] https://www.smplayer.info/

dillondoyle• 5 years ago

What's the benefit over VLC?

minimaul• 5 years ago

iina is a really nice player, but unfortunately maintenance of it seems to have slowed quite a lot. There's a lot of piled up issues and pull requests.

You'll also find that even on the most powerful of Macs that it will struggle with higher resolution video playback that QuickTime Player, VLC, or straight mpv play without issue.

satysin• 5 years ago

IINA is close to perfect software for me. It has a minimal (invisible until I need it) UI with just the options I need a click away. Yet powerful with all the advanced features available in the menu bar should I need them.

It has clean and well organised preferences that come with sensible defaults.

I have used it for over three years and not had a crash or bug with it ever. Never failed to play a file, even partially downloaded via torrent (so just random fragments of the file it was able to handle properly rather than just error/crash out).

But what I love most is that it is just a media player. It doesn't try to be a capture tool or converter or editor. It plays video and music files and does that job superbly.

If you're a macOS user I can't think of a better media player out there. Plus it is not only free but open source!

joeman1000• 5 years ago

IINA is abandonware man

pdimitar5• 5 years ago

Just recently I finally got sick of the various defects VLC developed on macOS:

- Running videos off of my NAS routinely introduced audio lag even on very small videos (less than 1h long). My LAN and WAN are at 1GbE and my NAS uses ZFS with very adequate caching setup.

- Crashes 2-3 times a week. Pretty rare but annoying nonetheless because I usually leave one huge video to play for the entire day.

- On iOS and macOS it forgets the position of a video played very recently. That one is rather new, <6 months. Still not cool.

Eventfully enough was enough and I moved to MPV just two weeks ago. Rock-solid so far, never lags the audio, snappier animations, quick keys to jump between chapters -- it's all good stuff so far.

I heard a while ago that the VLC team is struggling with a huge rewrite. As a programmer I sympathize but as a user I can't excuse them. Few months of a rocky ride is fine but VLC definitely is not how I remember it from the past, during the last 2 or so years.

---

Off-topic: can somebody recommend a tool that scans your videos and downloads metadata and posters for them? We're talking movies, shows, game playthroughs, music videos, and others.

jaytaylor• 5 years ago

100% with you, VLC on Mac is unusable and often won't even play things when I open them anymore - black screen, audio only, corrupt looking, I thought my media had the bits flipped or that something horrible had happened.

I use IINA now (linked elsewhere in this thread) and it's amazing, the rest of the internet seems to have found out about it years ago.

gotschi• 5 years ago

i use metaX for my movie and show database, game playthroughs and others might need different tools

pdimitar5• 5 years ago

Thank you! Will check it out.

mackatsol3• 5 years ago

There's a more up to date fork: MetaZ [https://metaz.maven-group.org]. Which claims to be 'Two letters better than MetaX'. heh ;-)

thrdbndndn3• 5 years ago

The last time I used VLC to do some testings (on Windows), it doesn't even playback a typical video color range correct out of the box (TV range did not convert to PC range properly).

I haven't see such issue in any video players since OG MPC days.

After some quick googling I did find some solutions involving changing some video renderer settings manually, but IMO it's unacceptable for any media player on mainstream OS/hardware.

I do still respect VLC as an OSS project though, they made plenty of important contributions to the open-source A/V field.

pdimitar5• 5 years ago

Agreed, they've done a lot in the past and they have my respect. It's saddening that they're struggling nowadays and are dropping the ball. :(

mackatsol3• 5 years ago

I use Subler [https://bitbucket.org/galad87/subler/wiki/Home] and when it confounds me I opt for MetaTV or MetaMovie [http://www.appfacture.com/en/]. I've also heard of iFlicks but never tried it [https://iflicks.app].

pdimitar5• 5 years ago

Thanks a bunch, much appreciated.

Tajnymag• 5 years ago

1. Kodi for an open everythin-included solution

2. Plex for a proprietary solution with good integration and remote access

3. tinyMediaManager for a minimal viable product solving your needs

pdimitar5• 5 years ago

Thanks a lot, didn't know about `tinyMediaManager` and will check it out.

trabant00• 5 years ago

I use mpv (and mplayer before that) from CLI and I find it the best user experience. Sure, it takes some time to read the man and play with it, but now I start it with a bash alias on the display I want and the sound output for either: TV + big sound system or monitor + desktop speakers, depending on whether I am at my desk or on the couch. With a cheap wireless mini keyboard I get all the shortcuts one single key press away.

With a GUI player I have to navigate menus with a pointer to switch displays and sound, or to select sound and subtitle language, subtitle delay, contrast and brightness, etc.

Mpv also integrates with youtube-dl. You can tune the buffer size to never require pausing because of internet problems, select whatever quality with no auto switching like the native youtube client. Supports playlists and everything.

h4waii• 5 years ago

Interesting they went with this title, the initials are VLC backwards.

Coincidence or what?

jorams• 5 years ago

It's called mpv. "Command line video player" is the description.

formerly_proven• 5 years ago

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/1e70e82baa9193f6f02...

azalemeth• 5 years ago

It's also worth noting that you can use this with libcaca [1] to get a truly command-line video player, i.e. one that plays videos in an 80x20 terminal, with --vo=caca. (Note that not all distributions compile this in, I guess to save space as most people probably don't actually want to watch videos via an ssh pipe...)

[1] http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca

fefe23• 5 years ago

This project has unfortunately been crippled by toxic devs who value their opinions more than actual technical arguments.

Report bugs and you may end up getting mocked instead of thanked.

When I reported that on my hardware I need -vo vaapi to get full hd playback without frame drops and stuttering, I was told to get better hardware. They wouldn't even entertain the thought that maybe -vo gpu (their default) needs more work. All I asked them to is to document in the man page that if you get stuttering video with -vo gpu you might want to try -vo vaapi.

This was a few years ago and apparently they did work on -vo gpu in the mean time, but they will never get rid of the stench that episode left.

Since then -vo vaapi has been deliberately crippled. It can not display subtitles and gives a deprecation warning when you try to use it.

It's too bad that mplayer has fallen into disrepair. Didn't they also suffer from toxic dev infighting? I seem to remember even a fork of ffmpeg because the other devs needed to get away from one particularly toxic dev.

Command Line Video Player

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